After a month in the South, I was well again--younger in feeling, and in
looks, than I had been for ten years. Carlotta and the children, except
"Junior" who was in college, had gone to Washington when I went to
Florida. I found her abed with a nervous attack from the double strain
of the knowledge that Junior had eloped with an "impossible" woman he
had met, I shall not say where, and of the effort of keeping the
calamity from me until she was sure he had really entangled himself
hopelessly.
She was now sitting among her pillows, telling the whole story. "If he
only hadn't married her!" she ended.
This struck me as ludicrous--a good woman citing to her son's discredit
the fact that he had goodness' own ideals of honor.
"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.
I was about to tell her I was hopeful of the boy chiefly because he had
thus shown the splendid courage that more than redeems folly. But I
refrained. I had never been able to make Carlotta understand me or my
ideas, and I had long been weary of the resentful silences or angry
tirades which mental and temperamental misunderstandings produce.
"Courage never gets into a man unless it's born there," said I. "Folly
is born into us all and can be weeded out."
"What can be expected?" she went on after trying in vain to connect my
remark with our conversation. "A boy needs a father. You've been so busy
with your infamous politics that you've given him scarcely a thought."
Painfully true, throughout; but it was one of those criticisms we can
hardly endure even when we make it upon ourselves. I was silent.
"I've no patience with men!" she went on. "They're always meddling with
things that would get along better without them, and letting their own
patch run to weeds."
Unanswerable. I held my peace.
"What are you going to do about it, Harvey? How _can_ you be so calm?
Isn't there _anything_ that would rouse you?"
"I'm too busy thinking what to do to waste any energy in blowing off
steam," was my answer in my conciliatory tone.
"But there's nothing we _can_ do," she retorted, with increasing anger,
which vented itself toward me because the true culprit, fate, was not
within reach.
"Precisely," I agreed. "Nothing."
"That creature won't let him come to see me."
"And you musn't see him when he sends for you," said I. "He'll come as
soon as his money gives out. She'll see that he does."
"But you aren't going to cut him off!"
"Just that," said I.
A long silence, then I added in answer to her expression: "And _you_
must not let him have a cent, either."
In a gust of anger, probably at my having read her thoughts, she blurted
out: "One would think it was _your_ money."
I had seen that thought in her eyes, had watched her hold it back behind
her set teeth, many times in our married years. And I now thanked my
stars I had had the prudence to get ready for the inevitable moment when
she would speak it. But at the same time I could not restrain a flush of
shame. "It _is_ my money," I forced myself to say. "Ask your brother.
He'll tell you what I've forbidden him to tell before--that I have twice
rescued you and him from bankruptcy."
"With our own money," she retorted, hating herself for saying it, but
goaded on by a devil that lived in her temper and had got control many a
time, though never before when I happened to be the one with whom she
was at outs.
"No--with my own," I replied tranquilly.
"_Your_ own!" she sneered. "Every dollar you have has come through what
you got by marrying me--through what you married me for. Where would you
be if you hadn't married me? You know very well. You'd still be fighting
poverty as a small lawyer in Pulaski, married to Betty Crosby or
whatever her name was." And she burst into hysterical tears. At last she
was showing me the secrets that had been tearing at her, was showing me
her heart where they had torn it.
"Probably," said I in my usual tone, when she was calm enough to hear
me. "So, that's what you brood over?"
"Yes," she sobbed. "I've hated you and myself. Why don't you tell me it
isn't so? I'll believe it--I don't want to hear the truth. I know you
don't love me, Harvey. But just say you don't love _her_."
"What kind of middle-aged, maudlin moonshine is this, anyway?" said I.
"Let's go back to Junior. We've passed the time of life when people can
talk sentimentality without being ridiculous."
"That's true of me, Harvey," she said miserably, "but not of you. You
don't look a day over forty--you're still a young man, while I--"
She did not need to complete the sentence. I sat on the bed beside her
and patted her vaguely. She took my hand and kissed it. And I said--I
tried to say it gently, tenderly, sincerely: "People who've been
together, as you and I have, see each other always as at first, they
say."
She kissed my hand gratefully again. "Forgive me for what I said," she
murmured. "You know I didn't think it, really. I've got such a nasty
disposition and I felt so down, and--that was the only thing I could
find to throw at you."
"Please--_please_!" I protested. "Forgive isn't a word that I'd have the
right to use to any one."
"But I must--"
"Now, _I've_ known for years," I went on, "that you were in love with
that other man when I asked you to marry me. I might have taunted you
with it, might have told you how I've saved him from going to jail for
passing worthless checks."
This delighted her--this jealousy so long and so carefully hidden. Under
cover of her delight I escaped from the witness-stand. And the discovery
that evening by Doc Woodruff that my son's ensnarer had a husband living
put her in high good humor. "If he'd only come home," said she, adding:
"Though, now I feel that he's perfectly safe with her."
"Yes--let them alone," I replied. "He has at least one kind of sense--a
sense of honor. And I suspect and hope that he has at bottom common
sense too. Let him find her out for himself. Then, he'll be done with
her, and her kind, for good."
"I must marry him off as soon as possible," said Carlotta. "I'll look
about for some nice, quiet young girl with character and looks and
domestic tastes." She laughed a little bitterly. "You men can profit by
experience and it ruins us women."
"Unjust," said I, "but injustice and stupidity are the ground plan of
life."
We had not long to wait. The lady, as soon as Junior reached the end of
his cash, tried to open negotiations. Failing and becoming convinced
that he had been cast off by his parents, she threw aside her mask. One
straight look into her real countenance was enough for the boy. He fled
shuddering--but not to me as I had expected. Instead, he got a place as
a clerk in Chicago.
"Why not let him shift for himself a while?" suggested Woodruff, who
couldn't have taken more trouble about the affair if the boy had been
his own. "A man never knows whether his feet were made to stand on and
walk with, unless he's been down to his uppers."
"I think the boy's got his grandmother in him," said I. "Let's give him
a chance."
"He'll make a career for himself yet--like his father's," said
Woodruff.
That, with the sincerest enthusiasm. But instinctively I looked at him
for signs of sarcasm. And then I wondered how many "successful" men
would, in the same circumstances, have had the same curiously
significant instinct.